


You Are A Runner

by bigmoneygator



Series: Build A House Inside Of You [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Chuck Lives, Domestic Bliss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Self-aware Chuck, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigmoneygator/pseuds/bigmoneygator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>..and I am my father's son.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The tale of the unfortunate romance that everybody sees, but no one talks about, least of all the two involved. Or: the story of the unresolved, unfortunate love affair of Chuck Hansen & Raleigh Becket, and how they fix it.</p><p><a href="http://8tracks.com/isladelmar/you-are-a-runner">now with a mix</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hi. I played real fast and loose with the timelines here; this is mostly fluff and will probably (but not necessarily) be a one-shot thing, so just overlook the illusion that they're on the 'Dome a lot longer than they're supposed to be. I like Chuck/Raleigh a lot and I figured what the hell. The title is, of course, from a song. This time it's "You Are A Runner and I Am My Father's Son" by Wolf Parade.
> 
> A few things: YES I STOLE THE "HEROES" LINE FROM TRAVIS BEACHAM. It was too beautiful not to, all right? 
> 
> This is vaguely in the same vein as [my other PR fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/922555), but not necessarily talking about the same Chuck even though he has some of the same feelings. Ya dig? 
> 
> I love existential crises. You'll notice the same sort of crap from [my book](http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/marissaesegreto) about gut feelings, depressing woe, etc. etc. It's a thing.

If none of this had happened, if Chuck had bumped into Raleigh by accident on a street somewhere, if Kaiju were just a paper mache mockup in a shitty horror movie, and giant robots left to cartoons, life would seem less like a roller coaster derailment with multiple casualties waiting to happen and more like an endless, meandering stretch of empty highway. Chuck likes to think of Highway 1, cruising in a Jeep, singing loudly to the radio with Max in the front seat. It’s a pipe dream, a moot point, maybe even a dead end.

Sometimes at night when he thinks everyone is asleep, Raleigh sings. He doesn’t have the greatest voice; it’s a little nasally and vaguely reminiscent of coyote howling, but rumbling and rather pleasant, sonorous enough to reverberate through the concrete walls of the ‘Dome. He sings songs that Chuck’s never heard before, songs about travellin’ on, bottoms of rivers, bad times for everyone. Sad, mournful tunes full of soul that roil in Chuck’s gut, lyrics rattling around in his thoughts for days and days afterwards. 

Raleigh just assumes everyone is asleep when he spends the nights with his feet up against the wall, head dangling down, singing songs his grandma had taught him a long time ago. He can’t sleep, not much anyway. He doesn’t know it, but Chuck is always sitting around the corner, ear to the wall, eyes closed. He happened to hear a snatch of a tune on his way to the bathroom one night, and every night afterwards, he sits and listens to Raleigh’s folk songs. 

It is common knowledge around the ‘Dome that Raleigh and Chuck are in some sort of love with each other. They are the only two that are apparently unaware of this. It’s something in the way they glance at one another in turn; neither are ever both looking at the same time. There is no eye contact. At dinner, Chuck’s eyes slide from his plate, from his father, from his dog, over to where Raleigh sits with Mako, then back to the ceiling, to the salt shaker, to the basket of bread. Not a second later, Raleigh peers over at Chuck, jaw working more slowly for a second, brows furrowing in concentration, before he turns his attention back to his copilot.

There’s a lot that can be said, with a few looks like that.

The two don’t speak, especially after their fist fight. They communicate in their long, one-sided glances, in the space they kept between themselves in the sparring room, passing each other in hallways with their eyes firmly locked on anything but each other. This was done with a deliberate sort of calm, but not a forced or strained one. There were just facts about the two of them: they fought, once. They kissed, once. They did not look at each other, ever.

The kiss was not a memorable one, as kisses go. Chuck was having a fit of existentialist woe after his brawl with Raleigh. When he was a child, he used to sit on the edge of the ‘Dome and stare out across the sea, imagining not the creatures that his father fought but all the pleasant little ocean critters, the turtles and the whales and the tiny shrimp and octopi. Sometimes the sea could calm him. Maybe if he wasn’t a Ranger he would have been a sailor. Maybe he could still be a sailor, if Operation Pitfall was a success.

And that was, unfortunately, exactly what was weighing so heavily on Chuck’s troubled mind. It had not occurred to him to be afraid of death before. It wasn’t the death, exactly, so much as the idea of a life left unfinished. If he died, there would be a missing place in the world, a void where Chuck Hansen used to stand. The potential of a life filled with children and more dogs, even the possibility of anything beyond piloting a Jaeger, was suddenly extremely uncertain. 

Raleigh had come to apologize, to explain that he knew what it was like to be twenty-one and feel too big for your bones, to see a great aching expanse that might be your life ahead of you. Chuck had been wrong to provoke him, wrong to insult Mako, but it was just as wrong of Raleigh to try to turn him into hamburger. Chuck was hard to find. One of the guys who oversaw seawater intake and desalination pointed Raleigh in the right direction.

Of all the ways and places to find Chuck, sitting on the edge of the dome with his forehead against the rail, staring at the sunset with a look of panic mixed with fear, tinged with regret, was not the way Raleigh had expected. 

Raleigh didn’t say anything. He sat down next to Chuck, threading his arms through the metal rails, chin resting on his arms. Chuck cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say a word. They sat like that for quite some time, neither one saying anything until the sun had long since sunk below the horizon. 

“I’m alright,” Chuck said softly, “now.”

Raleigh’s shoulders relaxed, dropping an inch. He could barely believe that Chuck had even spoken.

“Okay,” Raleigh said. “Good.”

“Whatever you came out here to say to me . . . you don’t have to say it,” Chuck said, a hint of arrogance coming back into his voice. 

Raleigh looked over at him, grabbing the rail and leaning back. He still looked like a scared little kid. Raleigh knocked his foot into Chuck’s, boots colliding with a dull thunk. Chuck looked over at Raleigh and his crooked grin.

Chuck coughed, then let out a tiny bark of a laugh. All of the Jaeger pilots had a bit of an uncanny ability to read people, a sort of low-level telepathy that spread beyond the confines of pilot to pilot protocols. Raleigh leaned forward, swinging his weight off the railing, to press his lips to Chuck’s for one brief second.

“I completely understand,” Raleigh declared before he clambered to his feet and wandered off, whistling a song that made Chuck shiver.

Chuck makes it a point not to think about Raleigh’s lips, the smell of sweat and salt and sun that clung to Raleigh’s sweater, or the deep aching misery that ratchets up and down his spine when he stares at Raleigh during dinner. He does not imagine being on the beach in Sydney like when he was a kid, just him and Max and Raleigh, laughing and roasting in the sun, slurping up melting ice cream and popsicles. The wetter the weather in Hong Kong, the more Chuck yearns for dry heat and sand. There are no beach trips with the threat of Kaiju looming. 

Raleigh thinks he’s the king of insomnia, catching naps like a cat in completely inappropriate places during the day, scaring the techs half to death when they find him sprawled on the gangway next to Gipsy snoring like a lumberjack. Chuck sneers when he goes to sit down at lunch with Mako and Raleigh is taking up an entire bench, mouth slack, hands dangling to the floor. Mako is always half bewildered and half amused by her copilot, smiling up at Chuck in that apologetic Japanese way. Chuck snorts and walks away to sit elsewhere.

Raleigh is not the king of insomnia, and Chuck is the proof. At night, he wanders around the ‘Dome, all nervous energy and steady footsteps like a heartbeat that echo through the metal halls. Sometimes he has Max with him, but the dog is a good sleeper. Chuck roams, hungry for something he cannot put his finger on, stopping to listen to Raleigh before he retreats, toes frozen and eyes bleary, to his bunk to lie awake until morning.

Chuck is insistent that he is not pining. His father is stern, tells him to get his head in the game. Herc knows what Chuck is like, how he was as a sullen teenager, nursing crushes based on blind hero worship. Now that Chuck is a sullen young adult, he’s not changed much. 

Mako tries to get Raleigh to just go and talk to Chuck, just go and say a few words to each other that aren’t combative or snide. Raleigh isn’t sure he can talk to Chuck like that, or if he can talk to Chuck at all after he pulled that stupid move with the kiss. 

Neither of them say how it’s pointless. Neither of them attempt to point out the futility of loving something with an expiration date, something whose time is ticking steadily and surely towards some kind of end. Rangers are nothing if not practical; they needed no stark reminder that any Drop could be their last. When Raleigh was first a pilot and everyone thought the Jaegers were invincible, it was different. But not now. Not now that Jaegers drop like flies and humanity’s last hope rode quite literally on the shoulders of a shining Mark V. 

It was just a matter of time. It was anyone’s guess as to what would happen. With Cherno and Typhoon gone, it could be a disaster. Even if it was a success, even if they closed the Breach, the ‘Dome still might be an emptier place. Raleigh had heard once that there are no heroes in a world where heroes don’t die. 

So Chuck and Raleigh didn’t speak. They were always separated by something; the precious few seconds between their glances, the good couple of yards they afforded each other in hallways, the concrete wall that Chuck leaned against at night. If one of them didn’t make it out, well. What was one more thing keeping them apart?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the most Raleigh’s spoken to him since they met, like he’s is suddenly trying to make up for all the time they’ve wasted, all the empty silent times they’ve shared. Chuck was comfortable with their level of interaction; the distance they kept between them was a convenient, silent space he could slip into. There’s no ruining something that doesn’t exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. These poor characters have had enough drama, haven't they? 
> 
> Short and sweet, at least as much as I could make it. These two are hard to write for; they give me a headache. Consider this almost an interlude.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for continued readership and support. :)

There is a finality, a certain solemn gravity, to the way Chuck suits up for the last time. He moves slowly, deliberately. He thinks about his body, burning up oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide and water. He wonders if there are a few molecules of air left over from his mother’s breath that he’s still breathing in today, if someone years from now will wonder the same about him. He thinks about his parents, about how he feels like he got the fire in his blood from his mother in addition to her soft features. How he got the blue-green of his eyes and the iron in his bones from his father. He marvels at the intricacies of genetic inheritance, and laments, suddenly, that there will be no son or daughter of his to pass down his flaws and quirks to in the DNA they would share.

Chuck thinks that he’s burning up precious minutes. These could be the minutes Striker and Gipsy need to save the world. Then again, they could be the very last minutes of his existence on Earth. It’s a weight that bears down on him, pressing down heavier than the feel of the ConnPod harness, the pull of Striker’s artificial muscles.

He hears Raleigh before he sees him. 

Raleigh is singing idly, a tune that Chuck’s heard him howl before; something about rain and the sky and grass. It sounds more sad now. He opens the door before Raleigh can knock on it.

Raleigh stands there, hand still poised to knock. He never uses his knuckles to politely rap, instead always pounding with the side of his fist. He’s a demanding guy, in his own way. He’s wearing his drive suit and a shocked expression.

Chuck can feel the vitriol burning up his throat like bile. He wants to start slinging venom before Raleigh can throw his own, to lash out before Raleigh can say something that stings. He’s been that way since he was young. But the poison dies on his tongue. He realizes now that there’s not much else to be in the face of certain death other than poised, resigned, nothing like he was in life. There’s just no point in all that anger now, not when it’s going to all go up in flames soon anyway.

Instead of something snide, Chuck asks “Yeah?” in a gruff, good-natured way.

Raleigh wrinkles his nose, but his tone is even. “I have something for you.”

Chuck shrugs. “Fine,” he says.

Raleigh holds out his hand, something dangling off his fingers. Chuck reaches out to take it, then hesitates, hand hovering awkwardly.

“Come on,” Raleigh laughs. “It doesn’t bite.”

“Asshole,” Chuck snorts. He snatches whatever it is out of Raleigh’s hand and inspects it. It’s a tiny charm, carved out of wood into the shape of some sort of ugly Buddha with a wicked little grin and pointed ears on a piece of faded leather. “What the fuck is it?”

“A Billiken,” Raleigh declares proudly. “They’re good luck.”

“They’re fuck-ugly, is what they are,” Chuck says. He’s trying, really, to not be a total jackass. But old habits die hard, he supposes, even in times of crisis. 

“Be nice,” Raleigh scolds. “They’re double the luck if someone gives it to you. Someone gave me that one, so maybe it’ll be triple.”

“You’re regifting a wooden troll?” Chuck cocks an eyebrow.

“My mom gave that one to me,” Raleigh says. He can’t hide the hurt in his voice.

“Sorry,” Chuck sighs, digging the heel of his hand into his eye. “Um. Thank you. Why are you giving it to me?”

Raleigh shrugs. “I have another one. They’re little tourist trap things, they sell them all over in Alaska. It’s supposed to be an Inuit thing, but it’s not. It’s bullshit. Some hippie or something made it up. But Yance and I . . . we must have gotten five a year, between Christmas and our birthdays and Easter and stuff.” He shrugs again. 

It’s the most Raleigh’s spoken to him since they met, like he’s is suddenly trying to make up for all the time they’ve wasted, all the empty silent times they’ve shared. Chuck was comfortable with their level of interaction; the distance they kept between them was a convenient, silent space he could slip into. There’s no ruining something that doesn’t exist. He eyes the little Billiken. The thing really is ugly. But the gesture isn’t lost on him.

Raleigh is standing there like an idiot, sheepish look on his face. They’ve spent so long not talking. Chuck can tell that neither of them are particularly good with words. He looks up at Raleigh and lets out the kind of sigh that starts at your toes and travels up, gaining sorrow and exhaustion and misery as it works its way out of your mouth.

The kiss is a memorable one, as kisses go.

Raleigh is surprised at first. He stiffens for a second before he seems to melt against Chuck’s mouth. They kiss like two people who are extremely certain they will never see eachother again; hot and urgent and insistent. Chuck doesn’t know if he’s ever been kissed like this before. Raleigh isn’t a refined kind of guy. He kisses rough and a little sloppy, with just a little too much spit. Chuck shoves him up against the wall next to the door. 

Raleigh laughs. 

“What’s so damn funny?” Chuck hisses.

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “I just knew you were a firecracker.”

“Pervert.”

Raleigh kisses him once more, softly. “Come on. We’ve got a world to save.”

“Guess you’re right.”

“Try to come back, yeah?”

“You too, has-been,” Chuck says, but all the fight’s gone out of him.

Raleigh laughs and presses his lips to Chuck’s forehead once before he swaggers out, whistling the song he had been singing before. 

There was a line from that song that always got stuck in Chuck’s head, but he couldn’t remember it until he was about to Drop.

 _Things change fast_ , he thought, _but this too shall pass._

\---

Chuck wakes up.

His eyes won’t open, or if they will, he can’t see anything. There’s something in his mouth, down his throat. It hurts. He hears a faint beeping noise. There are scratchy sheets underneath him; ‘Dome sheets. The desalinators could never take all the minerals out of the water and it made the laundry rough. Every muscle in his body feels achy and stiff. He tries to recall what happened in Striker, but all he remembers is something flying at him and a searing pain in his head, in his face. 

If this is death, it’s awfully familiar.

There’s a rustling, the sound of boots scuffing up the floor in the medbay. “Doctor Patel? I think he’s awake.” It’s dad’s voice. Someone is holding his hand, stroking his hair. “You gave me quite a scare there, shithead.”

He tries to say something.

“Don’t,” Dad says. “They’ve still got you intubated.”

 _Fuck_ , Chuck thinks.

“Don’t be like that,” Dad snorts. “You breathed in a lot of smoke. Maybe now you’re up, they’ll take it out.”

Chuck flops his arm feebly, trying to put his hand on his eyes, but there are a lot of wires or tubing or something and he keeps getting tangled up.

“They're just bandages,” Dad explains. “The doctor will be over here in just a second. Stop squirming.”

Chuck has a lot of questions. He wishes he could talk, he wishes he could see. He doesn’t like this, not one bit. He wants to know what happened. He wants to know what’s going on. What happened? How long was he out? Did Gipsy make it out? Where’s Raleigh? He’s so frustrated that he does what he used to do when he was a kid and he got mad: he starts to cry. It stings his eyes, makes his throat hurt more. His father holds onto his hand, tight.

“I know,” Dad says. “I know. Just calm down, son. Calm down.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raleigh is not a complicated guy. He has spent a lifetime being extraordinary merely in his good-natured simplicity. He isn’t stupid, far from it; there is just a very plain meaning behind all of his actions. He means what he says. He says what he feels, or at least what he thinks is necessary. There was no duplicity or spite in him. It makes his attraction to Chuck feel all the more strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what it's like to live in Clareville so if anyone is from the area or knows what it's like, let me know.

Chuck falls asleep at night to the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, to the feel of Max curled up next to him, to the gentle music drifting out of his secondhand CD player. After so many months longing for the beach, now that he’s here, he’s not so sure it was the best idea. He has nightmares about the Breach reopening, about hurricanes with faces, about choking on acrid smoke. He can’t seem to figure out where his memories end and the dreams begin.

Raleigh wasn’t there when Chuck woke up. He had to go. The President wanted to speak to him, and that woman waited for time and no man. Mako slipped into the medbay with a blue plastic CD case.

“Raleigh asked me to make you this,” she said simply, tucking it under Chuck’s hand. She didn’t explain. Chuck didn’t even get to listen to it until Dad rented the house on the beach in Clareville, and even getting ahold of a CD player was a somewhat dodgy affair.

After shelling out twenty dollars to a scabber at a local secondhand shop, Chuck finally opened the case. A scrap of paper fell to the floor, covered in a compact, cramped scrawl. Chuck stared at that piece of paper for a long time. Bending down to get it would be a Herculean effort. Everything still hurt way beyond what he expected. Dad was gone, out talking to the UN on behalf of the PPDC, or he would have called for him to come get it. 

The paper won that round. Chuck steadied himself with one arm on the bed and got down to his knees to pick it up. He carefully clambered back to his feet and sat down on the mattress, breathing as steadily as he could as pain shot through his back, into his hip. When he could see straight again, he unfolded the little piece of paper.

It was ripped out of one of the steno pads that Mako always wrote in, the kind with the recycled brown paper that pencil barely showed up on. Chuck turned it around and around in his fingers, looking at the words, inked in black ballpoint pen, but not reading them.

When he finally did, he couldn’t decide if the appropriate response was laughter or tears.

The note read: “Please put these songs on a CD for Chuck. Tell him I know he used to listen to my yowling at night and that he’ll probably find these versions a little nicer.” There was a bulleted list of song titles. Raleigh’s handwriting was very small. Chuck put the CD in the player and listened to it as he fell asleep, and he’s done it every night since.

With Dad so busy and out of the house so much, and nothing to do except “focus on healing”, Chuck spends most of his time on the beach. He’s made friends with a pair of young mothers next door. Their kids love Max and spend hours throwing frisbees and tennis balls for him. Chuck wishes he could be the one playing with his dog, but his throwing arm is wrecked. The kids feel extra special that they get to take care of “the Striker dog”, so that’s a plus, at least.

Chuck does a lot of waiting. The ocean and much of the beach is still fenced off while ecologists and biochemists tinker with various decontamination methods for the water. He waits for them to fix it so he can swim. The doctors say that swimming is good for him, good physical therapy to help repair his ravaged body. He swims in a pool with too much chlorine in the city, the physical therapists way too enthusiastic for his liking. 

He waits for Dad, always out meeting with important people. He’s the Marshal, now that Stacker . . . Well. Chuck doesn’t like to think about it. He turns the television off and sticks to Netflix. He can’t bear to see another news special advertisement with his picture plastered on the screen, pasted up next to Stacker’s and Mako’s and Raleigh’s. Especially Raleigh’s.

He waits for Raleigh. Chuck hasn’t heard a word from him. It’s like he’s a ghost now, singing songs from some other plane of existence. Raleigh gave one interview about Operation Pitfall, and before Chuck turned off the TV for good, he heard the same canned phrases, saw the same strained look of polite interest on Raleigh’s face, repeated over and over. Chuck misses the off-key, discordant versions of the songs that Raleigh used to sing. The recorded ones are too perfect.

Chuck is amazed at his own patience. If he was perfectly healthy, he would be going insane. Sitting on the beach, watching the kids from next door play with the dog, reading all the books he never had time for when he was younger; it’s good enough. He feels like a kid again. He has almost no responsibilities. Dad is out of the house all the time. He eats cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week straight. The only time he leaves the house is when he has to go to physical therapy, and the PPDC sends a car for him.

Chuck misses Raleigh. It blindsides him one night when he can’t sleep and he sits on the porch with Max, looking out over the water to ground himself. He cracks into a beer and takes a grateful sip. Technically, he’s not supposed to with his pain meds, but he doesn’t care. Towards the end, Rangers could never drink. With Kaiju popping through the Breach every other day, everyone had to be on alert constantly.

Now, if Chuck wanted to, he could lay up drunk all day. He doesn’t, mostly because that’s a great way to get sunstroke, but he _could_. And that’s the important part.

He smiles as he drinks his beer, Max drooling on his shoulder. He likes this life, but there is something missing. He hums one of the songs from Raleigh’s CD to himself, absently scratching Max’s ears. The bulldog huffs contentedly. Chuck has always been envious of Max. When his dog runs around in the sand, plops himself down somewhere to drool and nap, he knows that he’ll never feel that level of joy in his life. 

Chuck is hurting and he is lonely. He wears the ugly little Billiken that Raleigh gave him on a new leather cord around his neck. He thinks about the tiny, sweet moments they had. He is overtaken by an immense feeling of loss, of abandonment. He’s angry, suddenly and swiftly, that Raleigh isn’t there now. It’s been nearly three months since Chuck woke up. Raleigh wasn’t there then, but the CD seemed like a promise, or at least a warranty. Chuck assumed that he’d be back, sometime.

This is why Chuck preferred their silence. This is why he preferred the vast, open space of possibility to the solidity of concrete happenings. Before they’d said their goodbyes, Chuck and Raleigh were simply an abstract concept, not “Chuck and Raleigh” the entire entity but “Chuck” and “Raleigh”, the two separate things. There was nothing to be disappointed over because there simply was nothing there. 

Chuck had played the same game with his father his entire life. Give someone nothing and they can’t be disappointed when you continue to live up to their expectation of absolutely zero. But Chuck had to go and kiss Raleigh. Now there could be regret. Disappointment. A thousand things. They could have been anything. 

Chuck has a feeling that Raleigh will just be another mistake. He hugs Max close and sighs. Life suddenly seems very long indeed, and very lonesome too.

\--

Raleigh is not a complicated guy. He has spent a lifetime being extraordinary merely in his good-natured simplicity. He isn’t stupid, far from it; there is just a very plain meaning behind all of his actions. He means what he says. He says what he feels, or at least what he thinks is necessary. There was no duplicity or spite in him. It makes his attraction to Chuck feel all the more strange.

Raleigh’s always been drawn to other simple people: women with no-nonsense pixie cuts and pickup trucks, who hunt on the weekends and have no compunction about telling him when he’s being an asshole. Honest, upfront guys who say what they need when they need it, who wash their cars after church on Sunday and play poker on Friday nights. 

Chuck is none of those things. Chuck is deep and complex, each new layer of him something different, each facet of his personality a puzzle laid out for the solving. Raleigh had wished so hard that he would be granted more time, be given another opportunity to unravel the tangle of traits that were snarled up in Chuck’s personality. He is not the praying kind, but he prayed for Chuck’s return from the Breach.

He fought for a solid hour with the Navy officer the government sent to get him from Hong Kong. He refused to go without knowing how Chuck was doing, if he would even wake up. It was Mako who convinced him to go, in the end. She reminded him that they all had responsibilities now, to things besides the other Rangers and the Jaeger Program. He asked her to make Chuck a CD, to please keep in touch. She promised she would. 

Raleigh would have left a lot earlier if the President had let him. Mako called him up to let him know that Chuck was fine, passed along his contact information in an email. It’s been a long string of interviews and debriefings and fancy dinners in his honor, a whirlwind of visits to various doctor’s offices for scans and tests and readouts. Raleigh is about at the end of his rope. Instead of coming home the conquering hero, the prodigal son, he feels alienated by all these people who don’t know or understand what it’s like to make the kinds of decisions he’s had to. To live with what he’s had to.

By the time he thinks to call Chuck, his cell phone’s been disconnected and Mako doesn’t have his new number. Raleigh wouldn’t even dream of trying to call Herc, not knowing how busy he is now.

Raleigh buys a postcard from a grocery store with the Lincoln Memorial on it, scribbles down the address in Clareville, Australia that Mako gave him. He agonizes over what to write for days. The postcard lays on his cramped kitchen table in the tiny government apartment he’s been given for his stay. There are a lot of things that Raleigh wants to say to Chuck, and none of them seem appropriate for a postcard. After a few beers one night, Raleigh sits at the table, pen in hand, and stares at the postcard. 

He decides to write, quite simply, “Be there soon. Raleigh.” He puts three dollars worth of stamps on it, unsure of how much it would take to get there and too impatient to go to the Post Office. He presses his lips to the thick paper and slips it in the mailbox in the lobby.

How and when he’s going to get down to Australia to see Chuck, Raleigh is just not entirely sure. Chuck’s certainly not going to come up to the States, not while he’s recovering from multiple fractures and facial lacerations and smoke inhalation. Raleigh is almost certain that he wouldn’t come up out of spite and pride alone. Chuck is the kind of guy who needs to feel wanted and needed. He doesn’t beg, and he doesn’t go out of his way to ask for what he wants. Raleigh knows he has to be the one to go.

He starts packing his bags and wonders if Mako has any airline miles she’d be willing to share.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck spends an entire afternoon teaching Max how to stand on his hind legs when someone points their index finger and thumb like a gun, spends two more teaching him how to play dead when they say "Bang!" He teaches the kids next door who love Max how to make kick-the-can ice cream and focuses hard on not being an asshole to anyone. He doesn't listen to the CD at night anymore. He tricks himself into thinking that he's gotten over Raleigh, convinces himself that Raleigh is never coming, that the postcard was a fluke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hello, I've been so very very busy lately, hence the gap in updates. You guys don't know hell until you have to take an embalming class, I assure you.
> 
> I was going to post up a mix for this fic on 8tracks but I'm notoriously horrendous with graphics so I'm trying to strong arm someone into making a cover for me. (Otherwise I'll just make a really horrible one myself, but keep your eyes peeled on my tumblr!)
> 
> I hope everyone likes this chapter because I rewrote it three times. Thank you again for your readership and support! If you comment on my work with nice things it gives me such warm fuzzies.

The postcard Raleigh sent is hung on the fridge with a plain round button magnet, next to the calendar with all of Chuck’s doctor’s visits scribbled onto it. Chuck hung it with the written side out for a few days, but the words tormented him too much. He would pass by or go to grab milk and stare at Raleigh’s cramped handwriting, find himself trying too desperately to find some meaning in the spaces between the letters, in the array of hideous stamps. There is no meaning beyond the definitions of the words, of the sentence, and it was torturing him, so he flipped it. President Lincoln’s austere carved countenance watches him now, instead of Raleigh’s cryptic message.

There is no return address on the card, which frustrates Chuck to no end. First Raleigh runs off without saying goodbye, and now there’s no way to contact him. Chuck agonizes over what the message means, words visible or no. When is Raleigh coming? Is he coming at all? If he is, Chuck is a little perturbed at the presumption that he would be so welcome to just waltz into Chuck’s life like nothing had ever happened. 

On the rare days that Dad is around, he says that the meaning is clear. Dad looks tired all the time now; there are bags under his eyes, and the fine lines that are around his mouth and on his forehead have deepened. Dad’s never been short with Chuck, even when he was being an annoying little shit. He’s always been so patient. At the moment, he’s terse and tense and snappish.

“Give it a rest,” Herc says at dinner one night after Chuck’s eyes have drifted to the fridge and he's heaved a soul-crushing sigh for what might be the fiftieth time in an hour. “You’re putting me off my food.”

“What?” Chuck asks.

“Please, Chuck,” Dad sighs. He rubs his temples. “Stop torturing yourself. Just . . . cut it out.”

Chuck doesn’t say another word.

He’s started running again. His physical therapists would probably skin him if they knew, but there’s been something building up in Chuck’s bones since he got back to Australia. He can’t put his finger on it, but there’s a passing sense that things aren’t right. There’s excess energy being pent up in his muscles, stiff and weak from disuse. He thinks that if someone got near him they could smell the ozone coming off of his skin, feel the crackle of the electricity of anticipation snap around him.

Chuck couldn’t even sleep before he started running. He was just so antsy, always hopping from foot to foot, never sitting still. He dithered around the house, cleaning the windows over and over again out of boredom. It’s almost inconceivable that just four short months ago, he was waiting for the axe to fall and cut his life short, that he wished so hard for just a little more time, when now it seems so long. His old desire for life to be a meandering highway seemed suddenly very stupid. 

He found himself wondering if this was simply what life _is_ : a series of days, monotonous in their comings and goings, spent lazing on couches and drinking too much beer and leaving the house twice a week for PT, the only real difference being the weather and the shirt he picked to wear. He was almost ashamed that he wanted a normal life so badly, when his hours are so empty and his heart so heavy. He felt like he was going to snap if he didn’t start moving again.

So Chuck runs. He had been waiting for something to happen, but he realized that he had to go and _make_ things happen. He wakes up with the sunrise every morning and runs, looping through the neighborhood or down the beach. At first, he's sore and out of breath, laying down to nap for an hour after every run. Living on beer and sugared cereals and takeout pizza combined with near catastrophic injury have taken their toll. It takes a few weeks, but he's running three or four miles again. He always feels better when he comes back, like some of that that extra anxiety is draining out of him and being replaced with peaceful calm. Finally, he can sleep through an entire night.

Things seem to fall into place now that Chuck's gotten to moving around. Life starts happening around him in small pieces. He organizes his books on their shelves by the order he wants to read them in and devotes peaceful evenings to Hemingway, Joyce, and Fitzgerald. He watches the cooking channel, makes shopping lists and teaches himself how to cook with creme fraiche and bake pastries. He borrows a Vespa from the mothers next door to go grocery shopping every Tuesday and Friday. 

Chuck spends an entire afternoon teaching Max how to stand on his hind legs when someone points their index finger and thumb like a gun, spends two more teaching him how to play dead when they say "Bang!" He teaches the kids next door who love Max how to make kick-the-can ice cream and focuses hard on not being an asshole to anyone. He doesn't listen to the CD at night anymore. He tricks himself into thinking that he's gotten over Raleigh, convinces himself that Raleigh is never coming, that the postcard was a fluke.

He is completely blindsided when Raleigh actually shows up.

That Friday dawns grey and drizzling, just damp enough to make Chuck's shoulder and hip ache with a dull throb. Dad's not home that week; off somewhere doing reconstruction talks with the people in Japan or Seattle. Chuck's stopped paying attention to the particulars, the wheres and whens of Dad's absences. He crawls out of bed gingerly, testing his joints. He thinks that he can make a nice quick run around the neighborhood without hurting too badly. He leaves a bit of food in Max's bowl in the unlikely event that the dog would wake up before he got home and slips his feet into the battered grey and blue running sneakers he keeps by the door.

The air is a little chill from the damp but after a few minutes of running, Chuck is warm enough that he's glad he left his windbreaker at home. It's a little hard for him to find his stride that morning. He doesn't run to music, never has. He likes to make his own rhythm. After he makes it past the beach houses to the little tourist shops and cafes, his feet are beating a steady, pounding tattoo on the pavement. His heart pumps hard and fast and true. It's not much, compared to piloting a Jaeger, but it's not bad either.

There's an unfamiliar silver Jeep parked in the drive when Chuck gets back from his run. He thinks maybe Dad's gotten home early from his trip. When Chuck was little, Dad used to pick him up something special from each place he went with the Air Force, and now that he's away so much he's started to do it again. Twenty-one years old or not, Chuck still gets excited when his father pulls a wrinkled plastic bag out of his pocket. But Dad's leasing a red compact, at least for the moment.

Chuck rounds the car and stops dead. Raleigh is leaning against the car, hands in his pockets, scuffing the toe of his boot on the ground. He's got one of his stupid sweaters on, a green one with the sleeves pushed up. His hair has gotten a little longer and he has a bit of stubble on his jaw. He looks bigger than Chuck remembers, broader in the shoulders, as if his memory is making Raleigh smaller.

Raleigh notices him and smiles. Raleigh has always smiled with his whole face; his eyes light up, his cheeks seem to widen and his eyebrows shoot up. He pushes himself away from the car and takes his hands out of his pockets.

Chuck has spent the better part of four and a half months thinking about this moment, imagining even a simple phone call. He has positively pined for Raleigh since before either of them climbed into a Jaeger for the last time, despite his insistence to the contrary. But now, suddenly, instead of all the warm fuzzies he's come to expect, there is ice in his veins. His mouth twists into a frown. He crosses his arms to keep from shaking with the force of the sudden anger burning in his guts.

Of all the pretty, sweet things that Chuck has imagined himself saying, the only thing that makes it past his lips is, "You've got some damn nerve, Becket."

Raleigh is completely and obviously thrown, face crumpling to pieces. "Excuse me?" he asks, eyebrows furrowing.

"Maybe I should have said that you have some _fucking_ nerve," Chuck spits.

Raleigh's lips part in confusion and he shakes his head. "I'm sorry, _what_?" he asks. 

"Almost five months!" Chuck snaps. "Almost five goddamn months in this place and all I get from you is a postcard inviting yourself here?"

"I tried to call," Raleigh protests. "Your number got disconnected."

Chuck breathes in through his nose. He remembers that he's promised himself that he wouldn't try and be a tough guy anymore, that he would be honest with himself and with the people around him. He reminds himself that it's working out pretty well with Dad. He takes a deep breath. "I'm mad at you," he says.

"Obviously," Raleigh snorts. "What's with the hostility?"

"Let me finish," Chuck says, holding up a hand. "I am very, very angry with you. I just want to get that out there. I'm mad that you didn't call, that you couldn't wait for me to wake up, I'm mad that I've been stuck in this house for so long without anybody except Max. It's compacted itself."

"Okay," Raleigh says.

"I've been through hell. I'm tired. I'm lonely. And you weren't there. You ran away."

"I didn't run away," Raleigh explains patiently. "Really. Ask Mako, ask your dad. I fought with the guys who came to pick me up for a really long time. I didn't want to leave."

Chuck tries very hard to bite back the burning, nasty words about to come spewing out of his mouth, but he can't quite keep them behind his teeth.

"Well, you're just great at running away, aren't you?" he snaps. "Raleigh Becket, champion of avoidance and turning tail."

Raleigh's face flares red. "I can see that coming here was a mistake," he says, regret and bitterness tinging his voice. "I'm really glad I wasted twenty hours to come see an ungrateful kid." He gets into the Jeep. 

Chuck steps out of the way as Raleigh backs out, a sudden knife twist in his gut as he realizes that he's about to lose him again. But, he reasons, it's better this way. Better to get it done and over with now before Raleigh digs deeper than surface attraction and finds out that there's nothing there. Chuck is a husk, a shell, and it isn't fair.

Chuck probably would have lost him forever if his neighbor hadn't picked that exact moment to walk out to her car and wave.

"Good morning, Chuck!" she calls, unlocking her car. "Who's your friend?"

Raleigh hits the brakes, looking at Chuck with a stricken face. Chuck eyes him threateningly, daring him to make a scene in front of the neighbors.

"Morning, Eileen," Chuck calls back, pasting a smile on his face as he turns to wave. "This is Raleigh. He's a friend from the K War."

"Hello, Raleigh," Eileen says, waving. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Raleigh says, a strained smile on his face.

"The keys to the Vespa are in the usual spot, Chuck," Eileen says.

"Thank you," Chuck replies. 

Eileen gets into her car and pulls out. She waves again while she drives by.

Raleigh stares at Chuck. "So you're apparently a sweet kid next door now?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"Oh, piss off," Chuck snaps. "Weren't you in the process of running the fuck away? _Again_?"

"Harsh words coming from the guy who pretty much ran me off," Raleigh snaps back.

They glare at each other. The corners of Raleigh's lips turn up just a little. 

"You were really gonna let me go?" he asks, leaning out of the window.

"Well," Chuck says, scratching his chin. "There's only one motel in Clareville. I really didn't think you'd be hopping back in an airplane so soon. Maybe I would've let you sweat it out for a few hours."

"Liar," Raleigh says. "You were gonna let me go."

"Fuck off," Chuck says. "You left _me_ , all right? You're not the one who spent all this time just . . . stewing."

"You have no idea what I've been doing with myself," Raleigh snorts. "And whose fault is it that you've been sitting here marinating in your own unhappiness, huh?" 

Chuck jams the heels of his palms into his eyes and groans. "Raleigh," he says. 

Raleigh turns off the car. "Chuck. I'm very sorry that I haven't been around. If you'd given me half a second, I could've explained. But I've really missed you, and I just spent an entire day and nearly all of Mako's airline miles to get here, so can you at least let me sleep on your couch for a few hours?"

"You spent _Mako's_ miles? You shameless mooch."

"Is that a yes?" Raleigh asks. "I'm very tired. It's still yesterday in DC."

"Yeah, of course."

"Thank you," Raleigh sighs. "Really." He climbs out of the car, stretching. "Good to see some things never change."

"Watch it," Chuck says. "I can always rescind my invite."

Raleigh chuckles.

\--

Chuck keeps staring at the bags that Raleigh brought. There are only two: a PPDC issue duffel and a dirty canvas backpack. They're sitting in the living room next to the couch. Chuck isn't sure if this means that he took just a few things to stay for a little visit, or if he's brought everything he owns so he can stay a while.

When Chuck left to go get groceries, Raleigh was sprawled out on the couch. Now, he's just barely awake, lazing with Max curled up in his arms. Chuck feels a little betrayed by his dog. He puts away the food he bought slowly, suddenly confused about where he usually puts everything in the kitchen. He had agonized for twenty minutes over what kind of ice cream to buy in the store. He likes chocolate, the more brownie pieces and chopped nuts and ribbons of fudge and marshmallow the better, but he didn't know what Raleigh likes, if he even eats ice cream. If Raleigh would even stay after Chuck's little scene. In the end, he decided to be petty and buy Rocky Road for himself.

Chuck sighs as he puts away a box of cereal; he eats the healthy kind that tastes like cardboard now. 

Raleigh comes into the kitchen, running a hand through his sleep-mussed hair.

"Have a good sleep?" Chuck asks. He didn't mean it but it came out in a sneer.

"Not particularly," Raleigh says. Chuck turns around, lips pursed. Raleigh looks immeasurably sad and suddenly he feels bad about being so angry. "Do you really want me to go? I mean, I'm not going to stay here if you don't want me to. I can . . . I can leave." His voice breaks, just a little, at the last word.

Chuck deflates like a punctured balloon. All he's wanted for months is to see Raleigh, to get the chance to talk to him. To tell him that he was mad. He did now. So why was he still so bitter? _Daddy issues_ , Chuck thinks. _Abandonment problems, separation anxiety . . ._

"Don't leave," Chuck says. "I . . . kind of really missed you."

Raleigh's face breaks into a tiny smile. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," Chuck snorts. "But your ass is staying on the couch. I've got a bad back, you know."

"Not so tough now, huh?" Raleigh smirks.

"You really better watch it," Chuck says. "I'll buy your ticket home myself."

Raleigh laughs. "Okay, kid. Whatever."

He wanders back into the living room and turns on the TV. Chuck lets out a breath, instantly relieved. He didn't realize had had been holding his breath, terrified that Raleigh would walk away, that he had actually gone and pushed the one thing he wanted away for good. There is a certain calm that is afforded to Chuck, watching Raleigh sit contentedly with the ghost of a smile on his face, petting Max and watching the news.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck is surprised to learn that Raleigh is a quiet person. To Chuck, he's always been a bit of a mythical hero. There have always been stories about Raleigh Becket's brash impulsiveness. In person, he's very mellow. He carries with him a certain lightness. He doesn't talk much, but he laughs often. It reminds Chuck of a child laughing in their sleep; there is no specific meaning behind it. It's just joy, plain and simple. Chuck didn't know that people past the age of ten could laugh like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more dramatic chapter before I finally give this kids some happiness. ;) It got pretty long but I didn't want this to be just another part filled with frustration and tears. I think I'll probably wrap it up in one or two more chapters.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for the kind words and taking the time to read and comment. It's been a really rough week and you guys have all lifted my spirits a little.

Raleigh doesn't sleep his first night in Australia. True to Chuck's word, he's been relegated to the couch. Chuck might have a bad back but the couch is seriously uncomfortable; it's lumpy in the way that only old couches can be. The place probably came fully furnished, because Raleigh refuses to believe that either of the Hansens have such bad taste in furniture. At least he's not alone; Max has abandoned Chuck and is snoring fitfully on Raleigh's chest. At least the dog is happy to see him.

He watches reruns of shows he's never heard of before. His sleep schedule is wrecked from the flight. He shouldn't have taken that nap. He feels lonelier here than he did in the dingy apartment in Washington, laying awake and staring at the television, not really paying attention to the people on the screen but distracted from his own thoughts. He didn't know what he expected, turning up on Chuck's doorstep like this, but it definitely wasn't this.

Chuck wouldn't even look at him. He had said that Raleigh could stay, but he didn't speak to him. The only thing they've shared is tense uncomfortable silence over a delivered pizza. The gulf between them is an exact copy of the one from the 'Dome; separate beds, awkward glances, walls between them. Raleigh didn't travel this far to see someone he's missed so much to be dismissed like a travelling salesman. He feels stupid. He must have misinterpreted Chuck's goodbye kiss back in January.

The sun comes up and Raleigh is still awake, bathed in the flickering light of the television screen. Chuck slips out of his room, puts his running shoes on and leaves the house like a shot, front door slamming behind him. Raleigh can see him running down the street like something's chasing him. 

Raleigh hasn't purchased a return ticket, but he's starting to think that he should, and the sooner the better. It was a mistake to come here. Mako is going to kill him when he calls to beg more of her airline miles off her.

The problem is that he can't think of anywhere else to go. He didn't want to go back to Washington. The government wouldn't let him stay in that musty old flat for very long anyway. He supposes he could go back to Alaska, but there's nothing to go back to. His pension checks from the PPDC are going to start coming in soon, but they won't keep him busy. They're being diverted to Mako's address, since she has a permanent one and he does not.

He could always go stay with Mako in Tokyo. Japan always seemed like a place you have to stay for a while, and he's only ever seen it when he was riding a Jaeger. 

Max wakes up a little and licks Raleigh's face.

"At least you're being nice to me," Raleigh laughs, scratching Max's ears. It's going to be a real lonely time in Clareville if the dog is the only one paying him attention.

Raleigh pulls out his prepaid cell phone. It was the only one with international service that he could afford. He regards it for a moment before punching in Mako's number. It's a little early there, but she always answers when he calls. He misses Mako, misses someone who always keeps her promises and loves him so honestly and sweetly. 

"Raleigh," she says as soon as she answers the phone. It's so nice to hear her voice. He sighs, tired down is his bones. "What's wrong?"

"This isn't working out so great," he says.

"Tell me what's going on," she says.

Raleigh hadn't expected to cry, but he would be lying if he said he didn't get a little choked up, begging Mako for a ticket to Tokyo and trying to hide a broken heart and a bruised pride.

\--

Chuck comes back from his run still feeling edgy and keyed up. He knows he wasn't being terribly polite to Raleigh the night before, but he figures that maybe today he can make up for it. They could go out to lunch or go into Sydney. He thinks that Raleigh would really like the zoo. He hasn't been himself since he was a kid, but it could be a good time. He hasn't been outside of Clareville for fun since he's been there. There's not really a lot of fun to be had, honestly.

Raleigh is just tossing his duffel into the back of the Jeep as Chuck jogs the last few yards to the house.

"Hey," Chuck calls, confused.

Raleigh looks startled. "Oh," he says. "Hi."

"What are you doing?" Chuck asks.

"I'm . . . Well." Raleigh shrugs and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "I'm leaving."

"What? Why?" Chuck is dumbfounded. 

"I'm going to stay with Mako," Raleigh says, avoiding the question. "My flight leaves in a few hours, so I figured . . . I would just go now."

"Was that the plan all along?"

Raleigh heaves a sigh, so broken and forlorn that Chuck can feel it hit him in the chest. "Chuck," he says, rubbing his eyes. "I think that coming here might have been a really big mistake. I'm not an idiot, I can tell when I'm not wanted. I don't even know why I came. I'm really sorry I upset you."

"You didn't upset me, damn it," Chuck insists.

"Chuck, just stop," Raleigh snaps. "You're obviously not happy to see me. I was just wrong about us, I guess."

"About us?" Chuck snorts. 

"Yeah, kid, _about us_ ," Raleigh sneers. "It was pretty dumb on my part to think I could show up after not being around for so long and just plop myself down in the middle of your life and figure out what to do from there. I thought that maybe we might have had something, like maybe it wasn't just the fear of dying that made you say goodbye. But I guess . . ." He breaks off, biting the inside of his lip.

"You guess what?" Chuck growls.

"I guess you'll kiss anyone when you think your card's about to be punched." 

"You don't know me at all," Chuck says.

"No," Raleigh says, throwing his arms up into the air. "I don't know _anything_ about you, except that you have a dog named Max and a dad named Herc and the kind of sad story that everyone who's been around a Kaiju in the last eight years or so does. I know you don't talk about your feelings and you kiss like you're trying to prove something but I don't know _shit_ about Chuck, the person. Not the hero, not the scared kid, just _Chuck_. I built you up in my head and now you're . . . you're just . . ." He trails off.

"A big fat fucking disappointment, right," Chuck says flatly. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, kicks at a rock on the ground. 

Raleigh lets out a growl of frustration. "You're trying so hard to be a disappointment, Chuck. That's what's annoying. You can't kill something before it even starts."

"It's better this way," Chuck says bitterly. "Better you go running back to Mako before you find out I'm just . . ." He shrugs. "A big fucking fraud."

"You're not, though," Raleigh says, laughing bitterly. "You just think you are. You think you're big tough Chuck Hansen. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just scared."

Chuck barks out a laugh. "For not knowing a fucking thing about me, you sure seem to think you do."

"You wear more on your sleeve than you think." Raleigh digs the keys to the Jeep out of his pocket. "Well, kid. I guess this is goodbye."

Panic rises in Chuck's gut, spilling into his chest. He stutter-steps forward as Raleigh opens the door. Raleigh looks over, brows furrowing. They are both surprised when Chuck closes the space between them in three quick strides. He throws his arms around Raleigh's neck and buries his face in Raleigh's chest.

"Please don't go," Chuck says in a very small voice.

Raleigh is shocked to complete silence. He lays his hand gently on the back of Chuck's neck. He leans back and presses his forehead to Chuck's. "You are infuriating. You know that, right?"

"It's a gift." Chuck laughs weakly.

"You know Mako is going to kill me, right?" Raleigh says. 

"She better not kill you," Chuck says. "I only just got you back."

"You know, you could have just been this sweet to me to begin with and I wouldn't have had to call Mako and ask for another plane ticket."

"I'm sorry," Chuck says.

Raleigh wraps his arms around Chuck's waist and lifts him easily. "Well at least now I'm getting the kind of warm welcome I should have gotten yesterday."

"Put me down!" Chuck hisses.

"No way!" Raleigh laughs. "You haven't even apologized for being a little shit! I'll carry you around all day if I have to."

"Ugh," Chuck groans, trying to wriggle out of Raleigh's grasp. "No way. Let me down."

Raleigh tosses Chuck's weight up, getting a hold under his legs. "Only one way down, man."

Chuck can feel his face redden. "I'm sorry," he mumbles.

"What was that?"

"I said I'm sorry, you oaf," Chuck snaps.

"Well, it's a start," Raleigh says. 

"You can put me down now," Chuck grumbles.

"Not yet."

Raleigh leans forward and presses his lips to Chuck's. Chuck actually laughs, clinging to Raleigh's neck. They kiss for a very long time, not noticing anything or anyone. The world could have been burning down, for all they cared. Lord knows, they've lived through that before.

\--

Chuck is surprised to learn that Raleigh is a quiet person. To Chuck, he's always been a bit of a mythical hero. There have always been stories about Raleigh Becket's brash impulsiveness. In person, he's very mellow. He carries with him a certain lightness. He doesn't talk much, but he laughs often. It reminds Chuck of a child laughing in their sleep; there is no specific meaning behind it. It's just joy, plain and simple. Chuck didn't know that people past the age of ten could laugh like that.

They don't talk about how long Raleigh is planning on staying. Mako managed to get a refund on the ticket and has promised to save strangling either of them until they do something to really deserve it. Chuck guesses they'll just play it by ear. 

The first few days, they planned on going out and doing things; Chuck got so far as to drop Max off with Nancy and Eileen, the moms next door, but he and Raleigh don't make it past the front door. They barely even make it out of the bathroom. They've waited a long, long time for this; the chance to be alone together. Chuck will never admit it, but all he's wanted since he set eyes on Raleigh in Hong Kong is a warm bed for them to lie down in, a free afternoon to whisper to each other, more time. He is so glad they got it.

Raleigh laughs in the middle of sex. It was a shock to Chuck at first, hearing a throaty little chortle while his legs were in the air or when he's got a fistful of Raleigh's shaggy hair.

"What, exactly," Chuck pants, "is so funny?"

"Nothing," Raleigh sighs, flipping over. He sits up and kisses Chuck hard enough to bruise lips. "I'm just very, very happy."

Chuck can't argue with that. 

He had been unaware until now that sex could be so fun. The thrill had always been in the chase for him, the finding and acquiring of another person who wanted to go sneak into an empty bunk or an unused training room on the 'Dome. It had always been a means to an end, a get in-get off-get out affair. There is not one mean or rough bone in Raleigh's body, and when Chuck gets impatient or pushes too hard or fast, he puts his hands on Chuck's face and says, "We have all the time in the world." It makes Chuck melt.

Chuck's never been with a guy who switched. He has a way of attracting men who are alpha types, big guys with a chip on their shoulder who want to dominate everything they come across. Picking up a Ranger, one of the best ones out there, was a power trip. Of course they wanted Chuck to be the one to bend over. He did, plenty of times. Raleigh is the first person to give and to take, the first to show Chuck that sex isn't a game or a struggle for dominance.

With Raleigh, sex is truly a union. Chuck's never felt so connected to another person. They still only barely know each other, but Chuck would trust Raleigh with his life. Drifting with him would have been a dream and a half, Chuck would wager his good shoulder on it. They lay in bed, curled into each other, alternating talking with sex, for nearly the entire first day and most of the second. 

"We should probably go eat some citrus," Chuck comments, running his finger down the scars on Raleigh's left arm. Drive suit scars. Chuck has similar ones on his left side, running from his shoulder down his back to his hip. 

"Citrus?" Raleigh asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Chuck says, nodding. "To prevent scurvy."

Raleigh laughs. "Good point."

"Can't have much sex if we can't walk." Chuck slides himself on top of Raleigh.

"You're insatiable," Raleigh says, tucking his thumbs into the hollows at Chuck's hip bones. "You might actually kill me."

"You're the one who keeps saying that we have nothing but time," Chuck whispers kissing the angle of Raleigh's jaw. He shivers.

The probably would've stayed in bed for another two days if they didn't have to go get Max from the neighbors. Nancy and Eileen instantly adore Raleigh.

"But haven't we seen you on the news?" Nancy asks.

"You might've, ma'am," Raleigh replies.

Their youngest son, Christian, tugs on Nancy's hand. "Mama," he whispers. "That's Gipsy's pilot."

Raleigh smiles at the kid and kneels down to get on his level. "You a fan of Gipsy Danger?" he asks.

Christian hides behind Nancy, tucking his face into her shirt. 

"He's really shy," Eileen explains. 

"How old is he?" Raleigh asks.

"He's six," Nancy answers. "He loves the Jaegers. You should have seen his face when the _Hansens_ moved in next door." Her eyes roll skyward. "No offense, Chuck."

"None taken," Chuck laughs. 

"He's sweet," Raleigh says, standing up. 

"You two should come over for dinner tonight," Eileen says. "It's Sunday, pasta and meatballs."

"We couldn't put you out like that," Chuck says. "You already watched Max for me."

"Oh, hush," Eileen says, waving her hand. "I always cook too much. It'll just get thrown out if you don't come eat it."

After much arguing and insisting, Chuck and Raleigh agree to come over for dinner. Nancy walks back with them to get the keys to the Vespa, which Chuck forgot to put back on the hook in the shed, as usual. Raleigh goes into the living room to play tug of war with Max over a rope bone and Chuck snags the keys from where they were sitting on the counter.

"He seems very nice," Nancy says, glancing over at Raleigh.

"He's . . . in a class of his own," Chuck says. Personally, he thinks that someone dreamed up the word "gentleman" to describe Raleigh. Perfectly kind and patient and gentle. He knows that he is not an easy person to deal with, that he pushes to the breaking point and gets on people's nerves. He does it on purpose. But Raleigh, bless him, has just been rolling with it since he cancelled his flight to Tokyo.

"You two make a good couple," Nancy says. "If you don't mind me saying so."

Chuck looks at her and smiles. "That makes me feel a lot better, actually," he says.

She smiles. "You remind me a lot of me at your age. Don't be scared to let someone in, okay?" She pats his arm. She can't be more than thirty-five, but the age difference looms large now. Chuck always thought Nancy didn't like him much. It's always been Eileen making small talk and jokes and chatting with him. He thinks he might be beginning to understand why.

"Thanks, Nancy," Chuck says.

"See you at six!" she sings, taking the keys from Chuck. "Bring some wine, yeah? God knows I could use it."

"You got it," Chuck laughs. 

Nancy leaves through the back door and hops the fence into her own yard. Despite being a married mom, she reminds Chuck more of a very active twenty-something. He goes to sit down with Raleigh and Max. 

Raleigh makes play growls at the dog, tugging on the bone and dragging him around. Chuck nudges Raleigh with his knee.

"Yeah?" Raleigh asks. 

Chuck leans over and kisses his cheek. He laughs.

"You know," Raleigh says, "I think I could be very happy here."

Chuck smiles. "I was kind of counting on it."

They lay on the living room floor for an hour, watching bad soap operas and playing with Max.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck's never been the church-going kind, convinced that God had left him long ago, but sex with Raleigh is a religious experience. He wouldn't pray to God, not anymore, but Chuck would get down on his knees and pray to the way that Raleigh's hands slot into his hips, to Raleigh's mouth, hot and deliberate, trailing kisses down his stomach, to the feel of Raleigh's legs wrapped around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to [Kaylyn](http://thefatlady.tumblr.com), who has taken a part of me with her to Maine. We miss you, babe. 
> 
>  
> 
> [now with a mix!](http://8tracks.com/isladelmar/you-are-a-runner)
> 
>  
> 
> One more chapter after this. Thank you everyone for your continued readership. <3

Chuck Hansen can spend hours on end observing Raleigh Becket. Raleigh is like a different species, a new form of life, some quiet brand of miracle that Chuck almost let slip through his fingers. He is acutely aware of how incredibly stupid that would have been.

Raleigh builds a fire in the little metal pit in the backyard, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he arranges small sticks and crumpled newspaper. 

"Didn't know you were such an outdoorsman," Chuck says, spreading a blanket on the ground. He sits down with his legs sprawled in front of him.

"Boy Scouts," Raleigh says, smiling. "Didn't make it too far, you know. Much too uptight for me."

"Thought they had a thing with gay members back in the dark ages, eh?"

"I'm not gay." Raleigh wrinkles his nose. "I just like who I like. The parts don't matter."

"You don't like labels?" Chuck asks, digging around in a plastic shopping bag. He pulls out a bag of marshmallows and some chocolate bars. 

"Not really," Raleigh says with a shrug. He lights a match and touches it to the newspaper. "I guess when I was your age, maybe it was different. Like maybe the labels helped me figure out what was what and who was who. But it's limiting."

"Do you like girls or guys more?" Chuck asks, whistling for Max. The dog runs up and snuffles in the bag. "Uh-uh, Max. Not for you."

"I don't know," Raleigh says. "I don't pay attention to that. Women don't like it when you say you prefer men. Men don't like it when you say you prefer women. I like _who I like_. And right now, I very much like Chuck Hansen." He leans back on his heels, making sure the tinder catches. "Am I an exception for you or something?"

"What?"

"Oh, you know," Raleigh pauses to adjust a piece of wood. "'I don't like this gender except for this one person'. An exception."

"Don't flatter yourself," Chuck sneers. "If I only liked girls, _you_ wouldn't be my only exception."

Raleigh laughs. "You're just the sweetest, kid," he says. Satisfied with the fire, he plops down onto his butt on the blanket. He lays his head down in Chuck's lap. "Growing up is hard. I wouldn't take any amount of money to be your age again."

"Five years really isn't that big a gap," Chuck grouses, running his fingers through Raleigh's hair.

"Don't kid yourself," Raleigh says. "It's huge, developmentally speaking. You probably couldn't even pilot a sim-Drift when I was jockeying."

"I was sixteen when you nearly scrambled your brains, old man," Chuck says. "And I was about to be a pilot at that age."

"Haven't aged much past then," Raleigh laughs.

"You're being awfully harsh for someone who wants to get laid tonight."

"Geez," Raleigh snorts. He knocks his knuckles into Chuck's jaw. "It's not all about sex, you know. Maybe I like you as a person. Maybe I just want to roast marshmallows and talk about sexual identity and gender expression with you all night."

Chuck doesn't have anything to say to that. He shoos Max out of the bag with the chocolate in it and ties it shut. He puts his hands on Raleigh's chest, absently looking at the fire.

"Kid?" Raleigh says. "You look in it right now."

"Just thinking," Chuck says. 

"Yeah?" Raleigh sits up and nudges Chuck's neck with his nose. "About what?"

"Eh, it's nothing." 

"Talk to me," Raleigh says patiently. "It's been too quiet lately."

"You've been meeting with Congress the past three months!"

"There's a difference between meaningful talk and annoying chatter. Tell me what's on your mind. No secrets here, please."

"Well it's just weird, I guess. No one's ever . . . um." Chuck rubs his face. "You know, no one's ever told me they just . . . wanted to talk." He sighs. "I feel like I'm starting to understand why I'm so messed up."

"You're only as messed up as you let yourself be," Raleigh says softly. He kisses Chuck gently. "If you think you're going to be fine, eventually it happens."

"How do you know?" Chuck asks.

Raleigh laughs. "It worked for me. Come on, no more sad talk. Let's make s'mores."

Their quiet night degenerates quickly; Chuck smashes a burnt marshmallow into Raleigh's face and Raleigh wipes it on Chuck's shirt. They wind up roaring with laughter, sticky with strings of marshmallow and smears of chocolate on their faces, in their hair. Raleigh wipes up a stray bit of chocolate from Chuck's face with the pad of his thumb, blue eyes sparkling in the light from the fire, and Chuck realizes that he hasn't been this happy in a long, long time.

\--

Raleigh is a collection of strange quirks. Chuck catches him talking to Max when he thinks he's alone. Chuck talks to Max, too; these last few months with no one around have been especially hard, and Max was the only one around to converse with. But Raleigh doesn't talk to Max like Chuck does. Raleigh recites Shakespearean soliloquies and monologues from old movies to the dog, as if little Max can understand every word. It's strange and endearing and sweet.

Raleigh will eat anything Chuck puts in front of him, from burnt toast to a bourbon apple pie with too much whiskey in the filling. Raleigh ate so much of that pie that he got a buzz. Chuck isn't a bad cook, just a distracted one. When he focuses, he can make some really good food. Raleigh's cooking skills don't go beyond one recipe for really great chili. He explains that if you freeze chili it'll last a while, and he's gone an entire month without eating anything else. 

Chuck gets used to having Raleigh around, to waking up to his smile. To their morning runs that always turn into races. Raleigh is faster, but he always lets Chuck win. Chuck grows accustomed to dinners with Nancy and Eileen, to rapidly cooling fall nights spent drinking beer with the moms while the kids play with Raleigh. He wants Raleigh to stay here forever, but he doesn't have the words to ask or the guts to swallow his pride.

Raleigh is a very strange sleeper. He still naps like a cat, sleeping for an hour or two at a time, generally in the bed or on the couch. He says he's getting too old to sleep in odd places anymore. Still, sometimes Chuck wakes up in the middle of the night and Raleigh isn't next to him and there's music coming out of the kitchen. Chuck gets up to find Raleigh burning hamburgers and yowling along to Iggy Pop and David Bowie, swaying his hips and making up noises for the instrumental parts.

"Christ, are you insane?" Chuck asks.

"Just hungry," Raleigh laughs. 

"You're going to ruin my pan," Chuck says.

"I'm a grown man, I can cook myself a hamburger if I want one," Raleigh insists. 

"Clearly not," Chuck sniffs. "Turn the gas down, the whole house is going to go up in smoke."

"Why don't you just do it for me?" Raleigh asks.

"Was this a ploy to get me to cook for you?"

"Absolutely not," Raleigh says. "I was trying to do it myself."

Chuck isn't so sure. They wind up drinking whiskey and eating burgers that are more charcoal than meat, awake until the sun comes up. A little buzzed, Raleigh suggests they skip the run that morning, and they lay down on the living room floor, curled into one another, whispering into each other's hair.

Nancy and Eileen's kids, Christian, Stacy and Stephanie, are absolutely bonkers over Raleigh. When they go to visit, the kids hang off of his arms, screaming with happiness, for entire afternoons while Chuck visits with their moms. Nancy says that children can tell when people are honest, and they're drawn to it. Eileen comments loudly that Raleigh would make a great father. Chuck gently reminds her that he won't even be twenty-two until August and maybe kids are in the _future_.

"I was your age when I got pregnant with Stephanie," Eileen chides. 

"I'm probably not going to get pregnant any time soon, Eileen," Chuck laughs. 

"Babe, don't torture the poor boy," Nancy says gruffly. She eyes Chuck with mischief glinting in her eye. "Use protection, just in case." Chuck just laughs.

Chuck and Raleigh's time together now is a sharp contrast to the tense silence they shared on the 'Dome. Raleigh is a quiet person, but he's not reticent. He can spend hours answering Chuck's questions. And Chuck _does_ pester him, constantly chattering away. Chuck wants to know everything there is about Raleigh. He wants to be able to pass a final on him, write a research paper. Fortunately, Raleigh is an open book.

They talk a lot about Jaegers, argue good-naturedly about whether Gipsy or Striker would win in a fight. Raleigh points out that they can do that in a video game and Chuck uses the emergency credit card Dad gave him to buy it. Raleigh beats him, six games to seven, but Chuck is convinced it's because he's cheating. Raleigh thinks it's just because he's better at video games. 

"Besides," he says, throwing his arm around Chuck's shoulder and kissing his temple. "We all know Gipsy would smoke Striker."

Chuck socks him in the gut.

They talk about Chuck's injuries, what it's like to recover from getting hurt in the Drift. Raleigh is surprisingly open about his brother, about getting back in Gipsy after that. Chuck admits that he's glad he never has to get into a ConnPod again, because he doesn't think he could. Physically, he definitely can't.

Chuck is grateful that Raleigh never mentions his scars. The ones on his body are one thing; Raleigh has copies on his shoulder and chest. But there are a few on his face that embarrass him. He has an X-shaped one on his temple, a split from whatever knocked him out in the Pod. Shrapnel or something, some piece of Striker. There's a burn on his cheek and a long scar on his jaw. Raleigh doesn't say anything, but sometimes he runs his thumb down them, kisses where they are. He seems to know, to understand, that Chuck doesn't want to talk about them yet. 

Raleigh teaches Chuck the songs he used to sing on the 'Dome. Chuck likes "Bottom of the River" and "Parting Glass", but he balks when Raleigh tries to teach him "O Death". It makes him nervous to tempt fate like that. Raleigh doesn't sing it anymore, won't even hum the tune. That's fine with Chuck. He makes Raleigh listen to some of the songs he likes, old stuff from the nineties and the early twenty-tens that Raleigh's never heard before. 

"You weren't even born for most of this stuff," Raleigh comments. "My _dad_ listened to Nirvana."

"So? You weren't born when whatever weirdos wrote your folk songs," Chuck snorts. "I _like_ Nirvana."

"Good point, I guess," Raleigh concedes with a shrug. "Good music is good music, I think. If you like it, listen to it."

"That's your philosophy on life," Chuck grouses good-naturedly.

Raleigh grabs him and pulls him in closer. "Very true, little fish. If you like it and it's not hurting anyone, go have a ball."

It's a pretty good philosophy to have, Chuck supposes.

\--

Chuck's never been the church-going kind, convinced that God had left him long ago, but sex with Raleigh is a religious experience. He wouldn't pray to God, not anymore, but Chuck would get down on his knees and pray to the way that Raleigh's hands slot into his hips, to Raleigh's mouth, hot and deliberate, trailing kisses down his stomach, to the feel of Raleigh's legs wrapped around him.

They can barely keep their hands off of each other. Chuck has never felt this kind of aching need, raw and razor sharp, cutting and burning into him. He wants Raleigh so badly, all the time, he can hardly stand it. His skin feels like it's on fire, every nerve ending bursting and flaring when Raleigh looks at him with a grin, when Raleigh puts his hands on him in his gently insistent way. 

Raleigh has a habit of sighing platitudes into Chuck's neck when they're kissing on the couch, Chuck in his lap, hands in each other's hair. At first, Chuck doesn't like it, doesn't like being told that he's gorgeous or perfect.

"I wish you wouldn't say that," he says, yanking roughly on a handful of Raleigh's hair so he can trail his tongue lightly down the line of his jaw, tasting salt and sun.

"Say what?" Raleigh asks, hands up the back of Chuck's shirt, fingers digging into the skin there.

"That I'm perfect," Chuck says, nipping at the hollow below Raleigh's ear. 

Raleigh groans. "Why not?"

"Because I'm _not_ ," Chuck says.

"Sure you are."

"No. I'm not. 'Perfect' is too much, I can't live up to that."

Raleigh laughs, pulls his hands out from under Chuck's shirt to rest his fingers gently on Chuck's neck. "Chuck," he says, still smiling, "you are the sum of your parts, nothing more. You might be a messed up, broken thing, but you're perfectly whole to me."

Chuck doesn't know what to say. His face is blank, jaw hanging slack. Raleigh runs his thumbs underneath Chuck's eyes.

"Don't cry," Raleigh says.

"I wasn't," Chuck insists.

"Okay," Raleigh laughs. "You wanna top tonight?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Chuck demands.

"Do you need to feel in control right now, is what it means," Raleigh says patiently.

"I hate you," Chuck grumbles.

Raleigh just laughs. He seems to understand that 'I hate you' is Charles Hansen for 'I love you'.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck starts school for marine biology in the winter and Raleigh starts working with Nancy, hauling lumber and industrial garbage to recycling centers. It pays a little bit better than the construction, but he figures in the meantime he'll do both and save up. Chuck is often struck with the feeling that life, as he knew it, was only just really starting. Forget the roller coaster derailment analogy. Forget the highway. Life with Raleigh is completely unlike anything he had ever experienced before; there was nothing to compare it to, except perhaps a grand adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be an epilogue. There will probably also be tiny drabble tidbits posted up, because a lot of the cute domestic scenes got cut because they didn't quite fit anywhere. AND SO: the almost final chapter. Lots of dialogue this time around. Laziness? Maybe. DRIVING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT? DEFINITELY.
> 
> And, yes: The book Raleigh reads to Chuck is probably what you're thinking it is. Mako also says a line that'll be repeated in a Newt/Hermann fic I've got cooking up so look out for that soon! (Brownie points if you can totally definitely pick it up and know where I'm going with it.)
> 
> Thanks, as always, for your readership and general awesomeness. You guys are all lovely.

Chuck is laying on top of Raleigh in Eileen's hammock, lazily kissing his neck while Raleigh reads a book out loud to him. Chuck's not particularly interested in the book, some depressing piece of young adult fiction about kids with cancer, focusing instead on the calm lilt of Raleigh's voice, the way his lips look when he speaks. 

"Hey," Chuck says suddenly.

Raleigh looks up from the book. "Yes?"

"You never told me how you knew that I listened to you sing at night," Chuck says, nosing at Raleigh's shoulder.

Raleigh puts the book down on Chuck's back, wrinkling his nose. "Same way I learned everything about you back then."

"Yeah?"

"Secondhand information," Raleigh says. "Newt saw you on his way to the head, and he told me."

"That's embarrassing," Chuck groans. "I used to nearly fall asleep out there."

"Yeah I know. Your dad told me."

"Christ, are you not friends with anyone on the 'Dome?"

"It's not my fault you're an antisocial little gremlin," Raleigh snorts. "I make friends wherever I go. You shouldn't punch people if you want to make nice."

"You were the only person I punched," Chuck insists.

"That's not what Mako told me."

Chuck hides his face in Raleigh's neck. "Keep reading, jerk."

Raleigh chuckles and picks the book back up, picking up where he left off, voice steady and solid.

\--

During dinner one night, Eileen asks Raleigh how long he's planning on staying.

Chuck stops dead, freezing like a deer in the headlights. He stares at Raleigh, suddenly panicked, blood running cold. Raleigh finishes chewing his mouthful of baked potato and says, very calmly, "Until Chuck or his dad kicks me out, I suppose."

Chuck breathes a sigh of relief.

"Does that mean you're staying forever?" Stacy, Nancy and Eileen's eight year old, asks.

"I don't know, little miss," Raleigh says, leaning down to talk to her. "You're going to have to talk to Chuck about that."

"Don't be stupid," Stephanie, ten years old and sassier than Chuck could ever remember being, snaps. "Of course he's staying here forever, when two people love each other they stay together forever, like mama and mom."

"Don't call your sister stupid, young lady," Nancy says sternly.

"Well, I was just asking," Eileen cuts in smoothly, "because my brother is looking for a new employee."

"The lawyer?" Chuck asks, raising an eyebrow.

"No, no," Eileen says. "The contractor. David. He needs people with construction experience, and, well. Raleigh, I remember you said that you worked on the Wall. So I might have given him your name."

"A job?" Raleigh asks, blinking.

"It won't pay much," Eileen says. "But I thought that as long as you're here, you might as well start doing something to keep yourself occupied."

"Wow, Eileen," Raleigh says. "That would be great. Could you give him my number?"

"What am I supposed to do during the day now?" Chuck grouses.

"Who's the ten year old at this table?" Nancy asks, raising an eyebrow. 

It is, officially, Chuck and Raleigh's first fight as a couple.

Chuck is being stupid, and he prefaces the disagreement by saying so. 

"If you know you're being stupid," Raleigh sighs, exasperated, "why won't you just let it go?"

"I _did_ let it go, all right?" Chuck snaps. 

"Chuck," Raleigh says threateningly. "I have to work, I can't just live in your father's house rent-fee for the rest of our time together. He's working very hard. If I save up, we can get our own place one day, but for right now I just have to do this."

"I know that," Chuck says sullenly. He sticks his head under the pillow. "I'm being ridiculous, okay? I'm . . . lashing out because I'm scared of being lonely again," he says, voice muffled.

Raleigh sighs. Chuck can almost feel him deflate. He pulls the pillow off of Chuck's face. "I understand why you're nervous. Okay?"

"Sure," Chuck sneers.

"Don't give me attitude right now," Raleigh says patiently. "I'm being patient with you, you be patient with me."

Chuck sits up, rubbing his eyes. "Okay. I'm sorry."

"We talked about this, you can't just shut down and be an asshole when things upset you."

"I remember."

"Good. Now, here's the thing. It's not stupid to be upset or lonely, right?" He pulls Chuck into his lap. "Especially considering the circumstances. But it's a little stupid to argue about it. You feel the way you feel. I have to go to work. I want to be able to not live in my boyfriend's dad's house. I'm kind of old for that."

"Okay."

"So how about we make a deal," Raleigh says. 

"Depends," Chuck replies.

"If I even get the job, when you start feeling all cagey, go run for five minutes. And if you still feel all antsy after that, run for ten minutes. For twenty. Whatever you feel like. And if you still feel bad and lonely after a half an hour, call me. I will do my damndest to pick it up or call you right back. If Eileen's brother is going to be my boss, maybe he'll cut me some slack and I can leave my phone on."

"That sounds good," Chuck admits.

"But you only get two calls a day, so you have to try to distract yourself."

"What if I need more than two?"

"Call Mako. Call your dad. You don't talk to either one of them enough."

Chuck groans.

"Here, hey, I think I have something that might make you feel better," Raleigh says, snapping his fingers. He pushes at Chuck's shoulder to make him sit up and goes over to his duffel, digging around. He pulls out two sets of dog tags. "I used to keep Yancy's tags with me wherever I went. It made me feel a little bit better."

"You're not giving me your brother's tags," Chuck snorts.

"No," Raleigh agrees. "I'm giving you mine." He sits back down and slips his old PPDC tags over Chuck's neck. "Here. Now you're carrying me wherever you go." 

Argument over, they go to sleep, ankles crossed. Chuck gets hot at night so they don't cuddle up as much as they would like. Before Raleigh wakes up the next morning, Chuck slips out of bed and opens up the top drawer of his dresser. He pulls his tags out, relishing the old words "CHARLES HANSEN, RANGER: STRIKER EUREKA", and tucks them into Raleigh's hand.

Raleigh wakes up, eyes snapping open. He looks in his hand, then up at Chuck, confused.

"So you can carry me around, too," Chuck says quietly.

A tiny laugh escapes Raleigh's throat. "Okay, little fish. That sounds great." His fingers close around Chuck's tags.

\--

Dad's homecomings are like Christmas. Chuck wakes up early enough that he can't even rouse Raleigh, runs for as long as his legs can move, and comes home to wait patiently until Dad arrives in his red car. Chuck is so patient now that he has Raleigh. Waiting to heal, waiting for the beach to really open, waiting for Dad; they all paled in comparison to hanging around, sitting tight and waiting for Raleigh. It's not to say that Chuck hasn't realized how much he adores his father, but when big things fall into place, he supposes that the little things get easier.

It was the loneliness that killed him. He knows that now. He had Nancy and Eileen, sure, but they were busy moms with kids and jobs. It had been Chuck and Max, bachelors for life. And now Raleigh is there and the sun shines a little brighter and the bad days aren't so terrible and the good things sparkle that much more. Chuck does not mention any of this to Raleigh, but he thinks about it often. He thinks about the peace and contentment deep in his bones while he watches the rain, waiting for Dad.

"You're up early," Raleigh says, yawning as he comes into the kitchen, shirtless and bleary eyed. He scratches his chest and slides down into a chair, resting his head on folded arms. "Did you run already?"

"Yeah," Chuck says. "Sorry."

"I'm not in the mood for running in the rain anyway. Got work later," Raleigh shrugs, closing his eyes. "Can you make some coffee?"

"Sure," Chuck says, nodding. He hops off the counter and dithers around in the cabinets. He can feel Raleigh watching him, feels his smile washing over him. 

"You're kind of quiet today," Raleigh comments as Chuck spoons out coffee grounds.

"Dad's coming home," Chuck says.

"Antsy?"

Chuck shrugs. "I guess."

Raleigh gets up, stretching. He goes over and rests his chin on Chuck's shoulder, hands playing at his hips. "Why are you antsy?" he asks, kissing Chuck right in that spot below his ear that makes his knees turn into jelly.

"Just always am," Chuck sighs, "when he comes home."

"Anything I can do?" Raleigh asks.

"Stop getting your morning breath all up in my face," Chuck grumbles.

Raleigh laughs and pecks him on the cheek. "Just making sure you're okay." He sits back down at the table, shaking out yesterday's newspaper and whistling a song about the ocean.

\--

Raleigh is just getting home from work when Dad pulls in. Chuck watches from the window as Raleigh bounds over from Eileen's brother's pickup over to Dad's car. There's a flurry of movement, and Raleigh is extricating someone from the passenger seat, and suddenly he's in the foyer screaming his head off with Mako over his shoulder.

"Look what your dad brought with him from Tokyo!" Raleigh howls.

"Put me down, you brute!" Mako shrieks, laughing. 

"Go help Dad with the bags, dickhead," Chuck says, swatting Raleigh's shoulder. "Make a good impression."

Raleigh drops Mako and plants a kiss on her cheek. "This isn't done yet." He squeezes her hand and goes out the front door.

"Little brother," Mako says in Japanese. 

"Uh-uh," Chuck laughs, sweeping Mako into a hug. "I'm older, you can't call me that."

She squeezes him very tight. "Why haven't you called?" she scolds. 

"Been a bit busy," Chuck says. 

Mako lets him go, holding onto his hands. "You're so skinny!"

"I am not," Chuck protests. 

Dad bangs through the front door, weighed down with bags. "She's right, son, you look like you could use a few good meals. Becket's not been feeding you right, has he?"

Raleigh catches the door with his foot. "He's been doing all the cooking, sir."

"Becket, do not 'sir' me in my own house," Dad growls, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's been a hell of week."

"Sorry," Raleigh laughs. "Force of habit."

"Everybody gets one," Dad grumbles. "Come on, get out of my foyer, I want to see my dog."

\--

After dinner, Herc and Raleigh do the dishes, talking about reconstruction efforts and Raleigh's new job. Mako sits on the couch with Max on her lap, scratching his belly and talking baby-talk to him. Chuck lays on the floor with an ear cocked to Dad and Raleigh's conversation. He's trying to figure out if there's any indication of Dad kicking Raleigh out, or being mad to find him still there after so long.

"He's just happy that you're happy," Mako says quietly.

"That's not . . . Oh, hell." Chuck flips onto his back. "I can't lie to you, can I?"

"Not really," she laughs. "If you'll remember, I've known you since you were a rotten little kid."

"You're still younger than me," Chuck says.

She smiles. "You look very well, Chuck."

"Thank you," he says, nodding. "And uh. I really am sorry about the plane ticket thing."

"It's not a problem. I simply exchanged it for the ticket here," Mako says. "I wanted to see you. Raleigh sounds so happy when I talk to him. I missed both of you."

"I owe you one for getting him here," he says.

"Pay me back in your happiness," she says, smiling. 

Chuck was not aware of how much he missed his old friend until that moment.

\--

Dad has to take off to DC two days before Mako leaves, but he leaves the keys to car with Raleigh so he doesn't have to bum rides off of David anymore. They all take the ride to the airport and once Herc is safely on the plane, they spend the day in Sydney. Raleigh practically demands to be taken to the aquarium, and for a grown man, he gets awfully excited about the sharks.

On Mako's last night, they watch a movie in the living room. Raleigh passes out in the first ten minutes, sprawled out with his head in Mako's lap and his legs over Chuck's knees. Max drools and snores in between Raleigh and the back of the couch.

"I worry about him sometimes," Mako says, playing with Raleigh's hair. She wrinkles her nose. "You need to make him get a haircut."

"I like his long hair," Chuck says.

"If you ever make him cry again I'm going to gut you," she says cheerfully.

"He cried?"

She nods. "When he called me to ask for the ticket to Tokyo. He played it off very well, but I knew."

Chuck looks at Raleigh, peaceful in sleep, arms tucked underneath his head. "I'm glad he stayed."

"I would be more glad if I got a phone call or a video chat request once in a while," Mako says, still smiling. "But that's how it goes when people fall in love. You don't hear from them for a while, and then when you see them next it's like a hurricane blew through."

"Yeah," Chuck says, nodding. "You're right." He punches her shoulder lightly. "How are you doing, anyway? You and Raleigh played catch up, it's only fair we gossip too."

"I've been doing very well," she says, rubbing where he hit her arm. "I miss my father. I miss piloting. But I think he would be very proud."

"You and my dad are doing a lot," Chuck says.

"Yes." She nods. "I don't envy his position as the new Marshal. But being busy suits him, as it does me." She looks at Chuck, eyebrows furrowing. "I don't think I've ever seen you sit still for so long."

Chuck shrugs. "I'm . . . you know. I don't know."

Mako laughs. "I understand completely. You've learned patience, finally. Have you thought about what you're going to do now?" She nods at Raleigh. "He works now, and you just stay home. You must be bored."

"I wanted to join the Navy when I got out of the Corps," Chuck says. "I mean, that's what I always wanted to do. Before."

"Nope," Raleigh says, shifting as he wakes up for a second. "Stay in one place."

"Rals, go back to sleep," Chuck sighs, rubbing Raleigh's back. "I'm not going anywhere."

Raleigh huffs and burrows his face into his arms.

"I can't anyway," Chuck says. "Not as fucked up as I am now."

"I take issue with your description," Mako says. "But you're right. You'll never pass a military physical."

"Maybe I'll go to school." Chuck shrugs. "There's gotta be something I can do."

"Whatever you do," she says, "you'll always have us."

Chuck looks down at Raleigh and Max, up at Mako. If his father had been there, it would have been perfect. This, he realizes, is his family. He leans over and kisses Mako's cheek. 

"I know," he says. 

Mako smiles knowingly.

\--

Before Mako leaves, she sneaks into Chuck's room to lay on top of the covers like she used to do when they were teenagers and Chuck was crying over some boy. Raleigh is at work and the car service Mako sent for was going to be there soon. She kisses Chuck's forehead.

"I want you to know," she says softly, "that you are not the same Chuck Hansen that went into the Breach."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Chuck asks, rubbing his eyes. He'd already gone for his run, but he figured that he might as well go back to bed, what with Raleigh going to work for the day. 

"You're different now," she says.

"Getting hurt like I did might do that."

"No," she says. "Being with Raleigh suits you."

"Geez," he groans.

Growing up together, Mako had kicked his ass a thousand times, scolded him over bad decisions, and been there through nearly everything. This was probably the first time she'd ever had something positive to say about Chuck's taste in men.

"I'm very glad you're happy," she says.

Chuck smiles at her, and she cracks a grin. 

"Thank you," he says. "For everything."

She slides off the bed. "Of course, Chuck. I've already warned Raleigh about ever making _you_ cry. Be kind to each other."

"Sure," Chuck yawns.

Mako slips out of the room, out of the house, out of Clareville.

\--

Chuck starts school for marine biology in the winter and Raleigh starts working with Nancy, hauling lumber and industrial garbage to recycling centers. It pays a little bit better than the construction, but he figures in the meantime he'll do both and save up. Chuck is often struck with the feeling that life, as he knew it, was only just really starting. Forget the roller coaster derailment analogy. Forget the highway. Life with Raleigh is completely unlike anything he had ever experienced before; there was nothing to compare it to, except perhaps a grand adventure.

Raleigh sings along with Joni Mitchell as he does his pull-ups on the bar he hung off the bathroom door.

"Babe," he says, "babe, hop on, let me see if I can pull us both up."

"You are absolutely insane," Chuck says, tapping his pen against his notebook, not particularly happy that chemistry outside of Kodiak Island isn't all about ammonia based lifeforms.

"I could drink a case of yoooooou!" Raleigh howls.

"God." Chuck puts his head on the desk, looking out at Raleigh. "Do you want to do this homework for me?"

"Not really," Raleigh says, smiling. "Never was that great a student."

"Ugh."

"Come on, take a break." Raleigh hops down from the bar. "We could take a shower."

Chuck looks from his notebook, filled with scribbles on balancing equations and nonmetal covalent bonds to Raleigh, shirtless and a little sweaty and glowing faintly gold in the backlighting of the sunset coming through the window.

"As long as it doesn't take an hour like usual," Chuck says, tossing down his pencil. "I have a lot of work to do."

"Fine by me," Raleigh laughs. He goes over and leans down, kissing the back of Chuck's neck. "I love you."

Chuck swats at him. "I love you too, you awful pain."

"That's not nice," Raleigh says, nipping at Chuck's ear. "I really love you."

"I know," Chuck says. He twists to kiss Raleigh properly. "And you really promised me a shower."

"Yes, sir," Raleigh laughs.

It's a start, Chuck supposes. They're just at the beginning of something really, truly wonderful. 

And that, in itself, is beautiful.


	8. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally had this written last night at two in the morning but. I figured I would just wait and post it up today. 
> 
> Thanks everyone. You're all really pretty perfect and you've gotten me through some crappy days.

_two years later_

Raleigh reaches into the bed of his battered, second-hand pickup truck to grab the last box. He hefts its weight, leaning back on his heels to balance it. His arms are exhausted from hauling in boxes and furniture all day, but Chuck's bad shoulder made his fingers start to go numb around noon. Raleigh didn't want Chuck hurting himself, even though it was a fight to get him to start unpacking small things and compiling lists of what they still needed. He ended up taking off to go grocery shopping before Raleigh and Herc had even gotten halfway through the stuff in the truck.

"Is that the last one?" Herc asks as he comes out the side door.

"Yeah," Raleigh says. "Unless there are anymore in your car?"

"No, I don't think so," Herc says, rubbing his jaw. "If I find anything I can always bring it over tomorrow."

"Can you see the label on this one?" Raleigh shifts the weight of the box up.

Herc raises an eyebrow. "Sex toys?"

Raleigh sucks in air through his teeth. "Remind me never to give your son a sharpie and free reign ever again."

"Well, if you don't mind," Herc coughs, "I'm going to head out. Tell Chuck I'll call him tomorrow."

"Of course," Raleigh says. "I'd shake your hand, but. You know."

"The sex toys," Herc laughs.

Raleigh groans. 

Herc drives off and Raleigh opens the side door with his hip, pushing Max out of the way. Max is off the wall at the moment; he's always been a mellow dog, and moreso now that he's getting older, but the excitement of the move has him running around in circles and smashing into walls.

"Max!" Raleigh shouts as the dog weaves in and out of his feet, lifting the box to keep from dropping it. "Chuck will literally skin me if I drop this on you!" He maneuvers around the dog and puts the box on the kitchen table. He opens it to find approximately a thousand neatly folded linens and towels. "Sex toys," he grumbles. "Little shit."

Chuck has left the house in a state of complete chaos, boxes half unpacked with their contents all hanging around, things left on counters. He doesn't get anxious or agitated as much as he used to, but leave it to him to start a million projects and leave them all unfinished. Sometimes Raleigh is a little surprised that Chuck's pulling such good grades, but Chuck's smart. Smarter than Raleigh gives him credit for, sometimes.

Raleigh checks Max's water bowl and figures that sitting down for a few minutes wouldn't be too terrible. The sun's just starting to go down and Chuck will be there soon. He goes into the living room and throws himself onto the couch. He's out like a light in what feels like a second, sleeping soundly.

\--

Chuck feels strange, walking into his own house for only the third or fourth time. Raleigh fell in love with the place right away. There were flowers all over the yard in the spring when he had first found it, a lemon tree in the back and a trellis for roses on one side. Chuck balked at first, scared he was too young to be a homeowner or that the relationship would be ruined if they bought a house together, but Raleigh made it clear that he was buying the house whether Chuck was coming or not.

It was Dad, in the end, who gave Chuck the final push. Dad who had been so patient, letting Raleigh stay for so cheap while he got his feet under him, who approved of Raleigh so much that Chuck caught Dad slip up and refer to him as "son in law". Dad who said, quite plainly, that love didn't pay the bills but it made the shit times easier, that when two people decided to be with each other forever, they had to stick to that decision and stick with _eachother_ and come out stronger through all the bullshit.

So Chuck bought the house with Raleigh. School was totally paid for under his veteran's benefits and he had started working at a research lab for some spare scratch, breeding rare kinds of sea urchins for repopulation. It would be fine. 

Chuck whistles as he comes in through the front door. The kitchen light is the only one burning and he goes to drop off the groceries. Everything is totally empty; nothing in the cabinets or drawers, and just a few bottles of water in the fridge from moving in. Chuck contemplates putting everything away the same way he did at his father's, or if he wants to do something different. He thinks about it for a second and then just puts away the things that need to be kept cold. He'd figure it out tomorrow, after class.

Raleigh is asleep on the couch in the living room, which isn't exactly shocking. Raleigh's sleeping never evened itself out. He still barely sleeps at night. He still naps all the time. Chuck supposes that it's just going to be like that for the rest of their lives.

The sky is red, bleeding long shadows into the house. There are no blinds, no curtains, nothing yet. Chuck leaves Raleigh to sleep. He walks through the empty hallway, up the stairs. He touches places on the walls, big blank slates that might one day hold photographs of their important days. There are only two rooms upstairs, one bathroom in the whole place. Chuck can imagine that being a problem if they have kids, especially girls. But it's alright for now.

He sits down in the room that they decided would be their bedroom. The mattress is up against the wall and the fading light makes everything sort of shine. A few years ago, all this emptiness would have scared him, sent him running back out the front door and right back to Dad's place. He supposes that when you're empty, any reflection of that emptiness is frightening. Chuck does not think that he is a shell anymore. He's far too aware of all the good things; he positively brims with happiness these days.

No, the emptiness in the house that Chuck and Raleigh have bought is not exactly _emptiness_ per se, but more of a sort of vague potential. Anything could happen there. It's a clean slate. No kaiju. No Jaegers. A place of complete peace. 

Chuck is suddenly aware that he wants nothing more than to grow old with Raleigh in this house. He wants to paint this particular canvas with the lively shades of home, children, family. He thinks of Nancy and Eileen. What a life to have. Chuck and Raleigh, well. They're already heroes. They'd already had their adventures. And maybe Chuck's a little young, but he hasn't been so sure of anything since he joined the Rangers.

He goes back downstairs, not flipping on the lights. He wants to hold onto this feeling for just a few minutes longer. He bounds into the living room and kneels down on the floor next to the couch, resting his head on Raleigh's chest.

"Rals," he says softly.

"Mmph," Raleigh mumbles. His hand immediately goes to Chuck's hair, ruffling it gently. "Hi, little fish. Successful grocery trip?"

"Can we get married?"

"Okay, so I'm guessing they ran out of Rocky Road," Raleigh says.

"I'm serious," Chuck whines.

"Babe," Raleigh says, stretching. "Can you just lay down with me for a second before you start talking about marriage?"

Chuck climbs up and drops his weight onto Raleigh's chest.

"Oof," Raleigh huffs. "So you _are_ serious, huh?"

Chuck rubs his face on Raleigh's five o'clock shadow. "Yes."

"Okay," Raleigh says, kissing Chuck's forehead. "We can get married."

"Great," Chuck says. 

"This is where we're gonna grow old together, isn't it?" Raleigh sighs.

Chuck looks at him very carefully. They'd never gotten the chance to Drift, but sometimes Chuck is convinced that you can be so close to a person that you never really have to. They just. _Know_.

"We should get another dog, too," Raleigh says.

"I knew there was a reason I love you," Chuck laughs.

Raleigh kisses the top of Chuck's head and squeezes him tight. Chuck falls asleep in his arms, listening to him sing "Like A Mountain", dreaming about little kids and big beaches and years and years full of life. Raleigh's voice weaves through his sleep.

_'Cause I love you like a mountain._

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://isladelmar.tumblr.com).
> 
> [now with a mix](http://8tracks.com/isladelmar/you-are-a-runner).


End file.
